Comprehensive spatio-temporal benchmarking of surface water quality of Hindon River, a tributary of river Yamuna, India: Adopting multivariate statistical approach.

The Hindon River is the main tributary of river Yamuna and it is a significant source of surface water, which flows through the major cities of western Uttar Pradesh, India. The indiscriminate development of industries and urbanization along river basin coupled with rapid population growths contribute various amounts of pollutant in the river. Therefore, the present study was conducted to assess the spatial-temporal variability of river water quality (seventeen physicochemical parameters and eight heavy metals) during pre- and post-monsoon seasons for 5 years data at 19 sampling sites along the river stretch. Indices associated with water quality and heavy metals were computed to scale the accurate state of risk associated to its use for drinking and irrigation. During the pre- and post-monsoon seasons, only four sites were found having safe water quality index (WQI) values. The mean heavy metal concentrations are found in order of Zn > Fe > Pb > Cu > Cr > Cd > Ni > Mn. Considering the spatial and temporal distribution, the study benchmarked the water quality of Hindon River for priority attention.

Prediction of Omicron Virus Using Combined Extended Convolutional and Recurrent Neural Networks Technique on CT-Scan Images.

COVID-19 has sparked a global pandemic, with a variety of inflamed instances and deaths increasing on an everyday basis. Researchers are actively increasing and improving distinct mathematical and ML algorithms to forecast the infection. The prediction and detection of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 brought new issues for the health fraternity due to its ubiquity in human beings. In this research work, two learning algorithms, namely, deep learning (DL) and machine learning (ML), were developed to forecast the Omicron virus infections. Automatic disease prediction and detection have become crucial issues in medical science due to rapid population growth. In this research study, a combined Extended CNN-RNN research model was developed on a chest CT-scan image dataset to predict the number of +ve and -ve cases of Omicron virus infections. The proposed research model was evaluated and compared against the existing system utilizing a dataset of 16,733-sample training and testing CT-scan images collected from the Kaggle repository. This research article aims to introduce a combined ML and DL technique based on the combination of an Extended Convolutional Neural Network (ECNN) and an Extended Recurrent Neural Network (ERNN) to diagnose and predict Omicron virus-infected cases automatically using chest CT-scan images. To overcome the drawbacks of the existing system, this research proposes a combined research model that is ECNN-ERNN, where ECNN is used for the extraction of deep features and ERNN is used for exploration using extracted features. A dataset of 16,733 Omicron computer tomography images was used as a pilot assessment for this proposed prototype. The investigational experiment results show that the projected prototype provides 97.50% accuracy, 98.10% specificity, 98.80% of AUC, and 97.70% of F1-score. To the last, the study outlines the advantages being offered by the proposed model with respect to other existing models by comparing different parameters of validation such as accuracy, error rate, data size, time complexity, and execution time.

COVID-19 Data Analytics Using Extended Convolutional Technique.

The healthcare system, lifestyle, industrial growth, economy, and livelihood of human beings worldwide were affected due to the triggered global pandemic by the COVID-19 virus that originated and was first reported in Wuhan city, Republic Country of China. COVID cases are difficult to predict and detect in their early stages, and their spread and mortality are uncontrollable. The reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is still the first and foremost diagnostical methodology accepted worldwide; hence, it creates a scope of new diagnostic tools and techniques of detection approach which can produce effective and faster results compared with its predecessor. Innovational through current studies that complement the existence of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) to findings in the thorax (chest) X-ray imaging, the projected research's method makes use of present deep learning (DL) models with the integration of various frameworks such as GoogleNet, U-Net, and ResNet50 to novel method those X-ray images and categorize patients as the corona positive (COVID + ve) or the corona negative (COVID -ve). The anticipated technique entails the pretreatment phase through dissection of the lung, getting rid of the environment which does now no longer provide applicable facts and can provide influenced consequences; then after this, the preliminary degree comes up with the category version educated below the switch mastering system; and in conclusion, consequences are evaluated and interpreted through warmth maps visualization. The proposed research method completed a detection accuracy of COVID-19 at around 99%.

Understanding the Effect of Irrigation with Chromium Loaded Tannery Effluent on Ocimum basilicum L. vis-a-vis Metal Uptake.

In this study, we investigated the effect of irrigation with heavy metal loaded tannery effluent on Ocimum basilicum L., an important aromatic crop for utilization of tannery wastewater and remediation of chromium rich tannery affected soils. The soil was irrigated with three different dilutions of tannery wastewater viz. 50%, 75% and 100% of tannery effluents (T, UD and U) including control. The maximum herbal biomass (105.17 g plant-1) was found in UD100. Although oil quality was not affected by application of tannery effluents, the oil yield was decreased significantly, as compared to control, in all treatments except in UD75. The chromium concentration in different plant parts was in order of root > shoot > leaf. This indicates O. basilicum is an effective aromatic crop for remediation of tannery affected sites without any effect on crop growth, oil yield per unit area and oil quality and increase in soil fertility.

The pathogenicity and virulence of Leishmania - interplay of virulence factors with host defenses.

Leishmaniasis is a group of disease caused by the intracellular protozoan parasite of the genus Leishmania. Infection by different species of Leishmania results in various host immune responses, which usually lead to parasite clearance and may also contribute to pathogenesis and, hence, increasing the complexity of the disease. Interestingly, the parasite tends to reside within the unfriendly environment of the macrophages and has evolved various survival strategies to evade or modulate host immune defense. This can be attributed to the array of virulence factors of the vicious parasite, which target important host functioning and machineries. This review encompasses a holistic overview of leishmanial virulence factors, their role in assisting parasite-mediated evasion of host defense weaponries, and modulating epigenetic landscapes of host immune regulatory genes. Furthermore, the review also discusses the diagnostic potential of various leishmanial virulence factors and the advent of immunomodulators as futuristic antileishmanial drug therapy.

Modified plant architecture integrated with liquid fertilizers improves fruit productivity and quality of tomato in North West Himalaya, India.

India produces around 19.0 million tonnes of tomatoes annually, which is insufficient to meet the ever-increasing demand. A big gap of tomato productivity (72.14 t ha-1) between India (24.66 t ha-1) and the USA (96.8 t ha-1) exist, which can be bridged by integrating trellis system of shoot training, shoot pruning, liquid fertilizers, farmyard manure, and mulching technologies. Therefore, the present experiment was conducted on tomato (cv. Himsona) during 2019-2020 at farmers' fields to improve tomato productivity and quality. There were five treatments laid in a randomized block design (RBD) with three replications; T1 [Farmer practice on the flatbed with RDF @ N120:P60:K60 + FYM @6.0 t ha-1 without mulch], T2 [T1 + Polythene mulch (50 microns)], T3 [Tomato plants grown on the raised bed with polythene mulch + FYM @ 8.0 t ha-1 + Single shoot trellis system + Side shoot pruning + Liquid Fertilizer (LF1-N19:P19:K19) @ 2.0 g l-1 for vegetative growth + Liquid Fertilizer (LF2-N0: P52: K34) @ 1.5 g l-1 for improving fruit quality], T4 [Tomato plants grown on the raised bed with polythene mulch + FYM @ 8.0 t ha-1 + Single shoot trellis system + Side shoot pruning + LF1 @ 4.0 g l-1 + LF2 @ 3.0 g l-1], and T5 [Tomato plants grown on the raised bed with polythene mulch + FYM @ 10.0 t ha-1 + Single shoot trellis system + Side shoot pruning + LF1 @ 6.0 g l-1 + LF2 @ 4.5 g l-1]. The results revealed that tomato plant grown on the raised beds with polythene mulch, shoot pruning, trellising, liquid fertilizers, and farmyard manure (i.e., T5) recorded higher shoot length, dry matter content, and tomato productivity by 20.75-141.21, 18.79-169.4, and 18.89-160.87% as compared to T4-T1 treatments, respectively. The T5 treatment also recorded the highest water productivity (28.39 kg m-3), improved fruit qualities, net return (10,751 USD ha-1), benefit-cost ratio (3.08), microbial population, and enzymatic activities as compared to other treatments. The ranking and hierarchical clustering of treatments confirmed the superiority of the T5 treatment over all other treatments.

Antileishmanial effect of the natural immunomodulator genipin through suppression of host negative regulatory protein UCP2.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the antileishmanial efficacy of genipin, which specifically inhibits uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2) that is induced in leishmaniasis to neutralize reactive oxygen species (ROS). METHODS: The effect of genipin was assessed against intracellular parasites in cultured macrophages and in suppressing spleen and liver parasite burdens in a BALB/c mouse model of visceral leishmaniasis by microscopic evaluation of intracellular amastigotes stained with Giemsa. ROS and mitochondrial membrane potential were measured by H2DCFDA- and JC-1-based fluorometric analysis. ELISA was performed for various Th1 and Th2 cytokines in both in vitro and in vivo infected conditions to evaluate the type of immunological responses. The role of UCP2 was assessed by lipofectamine-mediated transfection and overexpression in macrophages and short hairpin RNA-mediated knockdown of UCP2 in infected animals. RESULTS: Genipin reduced the infection-induced UCP2 levels in macrophages, with optimum effect at 100 µM. Genipin reversed parasite-induced ROS suppression and mitochondrial membrane potential disruption. It has no inhibitory effect on promastigote or axenic amastigote forms, but markedly suppressed amastigote multiplication within macrophages, which was reversed by the ROS scavenger N-acetyl cysteine. Genipin administration (30 mg/kg/day) in infected mice showed significant suppression of liver and spleen parasite burdens with an enhanced host-favourable cytokine balance in a ROS-p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase-dependent manner. Co-treatment with genipin plus a sublethal dose of sodium antimony gluconate (SAG50) showed almost a curative reduction in spleen and liver parasite burden. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest the effectiveness of genipin as a synergistic agent for the front-line antileishmanial drug SAG in circumventing the resistance and toxicity problems associated with its high curative dose.

Pediatric cancers in Bihar: A retrospective tertiary cancer center study.

BACKGROUND: There is lack of information regarding pattern of distribution of pediatric cancers in Bihar. Aim: The aim of this study is to identify the pattern of distribution of pediatric cancers. OBJECTIVES: To analyze demographic data, type, and pattern of pediatric cancers in Bihar by retrospective clinical audit. MATERIALS AND METHODS: All individual consecutive patients between ages 0 and 18 years registered in the Department of Medical and Pediatric Oncology from January 1, 2018 till December 31, 2018, were enrolled in this study. Data pertaining to age, sex, and type of cancer were retrieved from clinical database by retrospective audit and stratified into hematolymphoid and solid pediatric cancer cohorts. Frequency distribution and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data using SPSS version 17.0. RESULTS: A total of 247 pediatric cancers were registered, of which 142/247 (57%) and 15/247 (43%) were pediatric hematolymphoid and solid cancers, respectively. The median age was 9 years, while male-to-female ratio was 2.26. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), 76/247 (31%) was the most common pediatric cancer overall. Hodgkin's lymphoma, 27/142 (19%) was the second most common hematolymphoid malignancy, after ALL was 76/142 (54%). Among solid tumors, Wilms' tumor was the most common, 28/105 (27%) followed by Ewing's sarcoma, 16/105 (15%), and germ cell tumor, 15/105 (14%). Central nervous system malignancies were among the least common solid tumor cancers, 3/105 (3%). CONCLUSION: ALL and Hodgkin's lymphoma are the most common pediatric cancers. Among solid malignancies, Wilms tumor, Ewing's sarcoma, and Germ cell tumor are predominant.

Leishmania donovani inhibits inflammasome-dependent macrophage activation by exploiting the negative regulatory proteins A20 and UCP2.

In visceral leishmaniasis, we found that the antileishmanial drug Amp B produces a higher level of IL-1ß over the infected control. Moreover, administering anti-IL-1ß antibody to infected Amp B-treated mice showed significantly less parasite clearance. Investigation revealed that Leishmania inhibits stimuli-induced expression of a multiprotein signaling platform, NLRP3 inflammasome, which in turn inhibits caspase-1 activation mediated maturation of IL-1ß from its pro form. Attenuation of NLRP3 and pro-IL-1ß in infection was found to result from decreased NF-κB activity. Transfecting infected cells with constitutively active NF-κB plasmid increased NLRP3 and pro-IL-1ß expression but did not increase mature IL-1ß, suggesting that IL-1ß maturation requires a second signal, which was found to be reactive oxygen species (ROS). Decreased NF-κB was attributed to increased expression of A20, a negative regulator of NF-κB signaling. Silencing A20 in infected cells restored NLRP3 and pro-IL-1ß expression, but also increased matured IL-1ß, implying an NF-κB-independent A20-modulated IL-1ß maturation. Macrophage ROS is primarily regulated by mitochondrial uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2), and UCP2-silenced infected cells showed an increased IL-1ß level. Short hairpin RNA-mediated knockdown of A20 and UCP2 in infected mice independently documented decreased liver and spleen parasite burden and increased IL-1ß production. These results suggest that Leishmania exploits A20 and UCP2 to impair inflammasome activation for disease propagation.-Gupta, A. K., Ghosh, K., Palit, S., Barua, J., Das, P. K., Ukil, A. Leishmania donovani inhibits inflammasome-dependent macrophage activation by exploiting the negative regulatory proteins A20 and UCP2.